Dropbox is testing a new photo and video upload feature, and as looking for people to help. In exchange, they’ll give you some extra free space: 500 MB just for trying, and up to 5 GB in free space depending on how much you upload. Go to the forum post linked above and download the new beta, then connect your iPhone or camera. The free space is credited to your account immediately.
If you don’t have a Dropbox account, you can get a free account with 2 GB storage that you can sync across computers and access from mobile devices. To get an account, click this link. In addition, if you sign up through my link, I’ll get some additional free space as well: 250 MB per user.
Note: please see Update 2 below. I am leaving the entire article as it was published. Wired UK has updated the article, correcting the errors, and it is available here.
In some ways, I’m a public figure. I write a lot about a small part of the tech industry: Macs, iPods, iTunes and digital music. I’m a senior contributor to Macworld, where I’m “The iTunes Guy,” and I write regularly about music and iTunes.
In September, 2010, I wrote a Macworld article, How to rip CD box sets in iTunes. Imagine my surprise when, today, I got a Google alert for my name leading me to an article on the Wired UK site, How to rip CD box-sets in iTunes. This article was published in the February, 2012 print issue of Wired UK, and appeared on the web on January 12, 2012.
While the title is only a hyphen away from my Macworld article, it’s obvious that the content is different. Yet it suggests that I had some involvement in it:
Ripping large collections of discs to iTunes is a laborious process. Make it easier with these tips by Kirk McElhearn, author of Take Control of iTunes 10.
To be fair, if Wired had approached me, offering to plug my latest book about iTunes, I would have been happy to offer them something. But instead, a “journalist” ripped off bits and pieces from several Macworld articles without asking either me or Macworld. Also, he makes me look like an ass. In the first tip, “Format,” he says:
To save hard-drive space, go to iTunes > Preferences, then click on Import settings. Choose Custom from the Settings pop-up menu; for Stereo bit rate, choose 64kbps; leave the sample rate at Auto and, from the Channels menu, choose stereo or mono — mono is fine for audio books.
The thing is, I never said the above about ripping CD box sets. I said that in a different article about ripping audiobooks. No one rips music at 64 kbps, and anyone reading it, who knows anything about music, will obviously avoid my book, thinking I’m a cretin.
The other quotes in the article are cobbled together from bits and pieces of various Macworld articles, written at very different times. (In other words, they don’t come from the article I wrote about ripping CD box sets in iTunes.)
For example, there’s this one:
“Compilation tracks won’t show under the name of the artist,” says McElhearn. A way round this is to check the Composers tag under the View > Column browser submenu. “In the same submenu, check Group compilations, and a Compilations entry appears on the Artists column.”
Do you understand that? I certainly don’t. There’s no “Composers tag;” it’s a menu item; you select it. And the Composers menu item – which displays a Composers column in the column browser – has nothing to do with compilations. What the journalist did was take the following quote from this article:
…tracks in compilations won’t show under the names of their artists, unless you have other, non-compilation albums by the artists on the compilation. If you have the Composer tag filled, however, all tracks from compilations will show up in the Composer column of the Browser. A practical option in iTune’s Advanced preferences lets you group compilations at the top of the browser: check Group Compilations When Browsing, and you’ll see a Compilations entry at the top of the Artists column so you can find your compilations easily.
With a bit of slicing and dicing, he managed to come up with a text that makes no sense at all.
I’m pretty amazed that the journalist, Matt Hussey, would rip off content like this, mention my name, plug my book, and not even contact me about it. It’s standard practice that when you attribute something more than just a quote to someone you have them vet it.
The Wired UK website editor has said that this is magazine content, and they just published what gets into print. I’m waiting to hear back from Wired UK magazine; I got an e-mail from the editor, who is contacting the writer. But no matter what, this is some piss-poor excuse for journalism.
In the broader scheme of things, it’s just a blip, but I spend a lot of time honing my expertise in the areas I cover. I don’t appreciate being made to look like I don’t know what I’m talking about. The damage to my reputation caused by this article may be hard to quantify, but it is certainly not negligible.
Update: thanks to all the friends and colleagues who have been tweeting and retweeting this. It’s obvious, from those tweets and e-mails that I’ve received, that my outrage is valid. Fellow journalists are insulted by this type of activity.
Update 2: It turns out that I may have overreacted. The journalist did, indeed, contact me four months ago, and sent me a draft – very different from what was published; it contains three sections, not the five in the article – but the mistakes in the final version are all his (or, perhaps, his editor’s). I never heard back from him, and it slipped my mind, as one generally sends a note to someone when something is published (at least I do, every time I quote someone in my articles, or even review products). So I am working with Wired to rectify the errors in the online version of the article. Until the article is corrected, I will leave this article online.
I do apologize to Wired UK, and to Matthew Hussey, for my overreaction. Given the number of contacts I have, and the amount of articles I write, four months is a very long time. I should have been contacted when the article was published, or when it went on the web site; as I say above, I contact everyone I quote, and every company whose software I review when I write, as soon as articles go live.
I’m moving house in two days, and in the past week, as I’ve been packing, I’ve realized that I’d accumulated an alarming amount of stuff. I’m not a hoarder, or a collector, but I read a lot, and listen to a lot of music. The amount of books in the house is astounding, and I’ve decided to toss about half of them. While I have a lot of CDs and DVDs, they don’t take up a lot of space: there are three big movers’ cartons of DVDs, and about 8 smaller cartons of CDs. A lot of my music is digital, and that doesn’t take up any space.
So, I’ve decided to buy less. And I’ve come up with a way to (try to) limit my purchases of recreational stuff: books, CDs and DVDs. I sell some stuff on Amazon.fr – used books and CDs, mostly, though books in English don’t sell often. I also make some money from readers to this website who click through to my Amazon affiliate links; that comes to several hundred dollars a year. So, my idea is this: I’m going to keep a ledger (well, a spreadsheet) of what I sell, and what I earn in affiliate income, and will only buy new things with that money. I’m planning to sell off a large share of my CD collection – mostly classical CDs – so that should turn out to be enough money for me to buy a bunch of new stuff. And I won’t count any digital purchases, as they don’t take up space. (Remember, you can help by clicking on one of my Amazon affiliate links before you shop at Amazon!) Fortunately – or unfortunately – I got off to a good start, selling some €500 of used go books, including some that are very rare. So my ledger currently has a nice credit…
Uncluttering your home can be a way of simplifying your life, and I’m going to try to do so this year. Rather than buy a lot of new books and CDs, I’m going to re-read my favorite books, and listen more to a lot of the music I already have. (Since I review classical CDs for MusicWeb International, I’ll get some new CDs that way.)
My main goal is to not use up any more space than what I already have for these things. (Which, for books, is frighteningly large.) I’ll let you know in a year how it works out.
Bonus: for some comic relief, here’s George Carlin talking about “stuff”:
I’d like to welcome my new sponsor, Moom. Or, more correctly, Many Tricks Software, whose useful window-organizing utility for Mac OS X, Moom, is a hugely popular Mac utility. With Moom, you can resize, organize and manage windows using the mouse or keyboard, setting up windows to fill your screen, or choosing specific sizes and forms for the windows of different applications.
Moom is hard to explain in words, but once you try it out, you quickly understand what it does and why you need it. For just $5, Moom gives you powerful features to manage your windows. Try or buy Moom on the Many Tricks website.
If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’ll know that I’ve never run ads, with the exception of Amazon affiliate links, and, recently, an Amazon ad at the end of each article, only when it is viewed on its own page. I’ve decided to try to sell a few ads, to see if I can monetize the work I spend on this site.
I’m a freelance writer, and make my living from my writing. I write this blog to not only promote my writings – linking to my books or articles, for example – but also to say things I want to say. While I have outlets for articles about Macs, iTunes and the iPod, and I review classical CDs, there are still things I am interested in writing about that I simply don’t have the time to try to sell.
My interests are varied, and this site has always been eclectic. On the main page today are posts about recent Macworld articles, Macs, iTunes, classical music, the Grateful Dead, and some DVDs I liked. I also write a lot about books that interest me, but there’s nothing on the front page right now about my favorite authors. I understand that there are a number of different types of people who visit this site, some of whom are Mac users, other who are classical music fans, and so on.
In selling ads, I’m essentially targeting the Mac market, as my main activity is writing about Macs. However, this doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be ads from, say, classical record labels, publishers or iPod accessory vendors. I will only approve ads that fit with the site, and will be careful to ensure that they don’t become a nuisance. I don’t expect to make a lot, but getting some compensation for the time I spend working on this site would be nice. And, if I get a few advertisers, that will pay for me to spend more time writing for this site.
If you want to advertise, click on the box to the right, or below, that says Advertise Here. If you wish to discuss ads different from what is available via that link, contact me by e-mail by clicking on the envelope icon in the sidebar.
What do you think? Will a few ads on this site bother you?
The New York Times announced today that as of March 28, full access to the newspaper’s web site will no longer be free. This is not a surprise, but what is a shock is the price. The Times offers three prices: for web and tablet access, it’s $20 a month. For web and smartphone access, it’s $15 a month. But for access using all three platforms, it’s $35 a month. That’s $420 a year to read the New York Times on multiple devices, a price that approaches the cost of a print subscription. (Full 7-day home delivery in New York City costs about $608 a year.)
Current home delivery subscribers will get full, free access to the digital content. Interestingly, it seems that even those who only subscribe to the New York Times Book Review at a cost of $91 a year get that access, as do those who get full weekly, weekday or weekend subscriptions. (I know someone who subscribes to the Book Review alone, at $1.75 a week. When they the page about the free access to the new digital version for home delivery, the texts there seemed to indicate that their subscription would give them free access.)
I’m all in favor of paying for news. I think it’s important, and I think the “free” experiment we’ve been living with for years has greatly hurt the ability of newspapers to provide quality news. But even just for web and tablet ($260 a year) or web and smartphone ($195) access, I find these prices to be too high. I’d gladly pay, say, $100 a year to access the New York Times web site, but I can’t see committing to much more than that. Especially because even subscribers will still see ads! It’s also worth noting that even those subscribers paying $455 will have to pay more for crosswords, if they wish to have online access to them. And, one more thing, they really need to improve their crappy iPad app to give value to tablet subscriptions.
Granted, all users will be able to read 20 articles a month, and some trickery will allow them to read articles if the enter the site via links on other sites. But many users will simply go to other sites. This was bound to happen no matter what the cost, but this high pricing scheme will certainly turn off a great many readers (such as myself) who would be willing to pay for content on the site.
My guess is that this will be a resounding failure. The New York Times has already sent out e-mails to existing users saying, “As a loyal reader of NYTimes.com, you will receive a special offer to save on our new digital subscriptions,” and I think many people, with a “special offer” will try out the service. But I think the New York Times is pricing themselves out of the market.
Time will tell, but on March 28, I think the New York Times is in for a surprise.
A few days ago, I ordered a subscription to The Economist, a British magazine (they oddly call it a “newspaper”) with a broad international coverage, and a generally balance point of view. (Though economically, they are to the right of center.) I had three choices: a print subscription to the dead-tree version of the magazine, and access to the web and iOS versions of the content, or a digital-only subscription. The digital-only subscription was only a pittance below the combined subscription, and since my wife would want to read the print version (I’m more interested in reading it on my iPad), I paid a dozen euros more for the print/digital subscription.
I was expecting to be able to start accessing the digital subscription right away; after all, they took my money right away. But when I looked into how I activated it, I found that I needed a print label to be able to activate my digital subscription.
Now, this is terribly antediluvian; to think that they cannot organize their database so the purchase of a subscription automatically activates digitally is very sad indeed. In fact, what do they do if you purchase a digital-only subscription? If they’re able to activate that, then why can’t they activate a combined subscription right away?
As an aside, I’ll note that, while I’ll get a year’s issues of The Economist in print, I’ll get somewhat less in digital, because of the time it takes to get my first issue. Since I’ve been billed already, and I’m not getting digital access, and it’ll take a few weeks to get the first issue, I don’t even know when my subscription period begins and ends.
I find it sad that a company with such a digital presence cannot manage something as simple as providing access to a paid subscriber when the subscription begins. While The Economist is at the forefront of digital distribution, with a well-thought-out iPad app, they’re back end is somewhat archaic. This behavior is something I would have expected back in the 20th century, but databases and web interfaces are advanced enough that it should be trivial for them to be able to activate subscriptions immediately.
Kirk McElhearn writes about Macs, iPods, iPads, iTunes, books, music and more. He's written a dozen books, is a Senior Contributor to Macworld, where he is The iTunes Guy, and writes for several other web sites and magazines. He reviews classical CDs for MusicWeb and audiobooks for Audiofile, and is a French-English translator.
Sponsors
My latest book: Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ, Second Edition
